Googling my Mennonite Ancestors

[walkitout]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2784628

Title: Inherited diseases in North American Mennonites: focus on Old Colony (Chortitza) Mennonites

Yeah, as recently as five years ago, I wouldn't have known about Chortitza. Anyway.

"Old Colony Mennonites are of Dutch/German origin and descend from approximately 400 founding families who settled in the Old Colony, Chortitza (the Ukraine, USSR) in the late 1700s, and then migrated to Canada and Central and South America in the past century."

Very recognizably grand-dad's clan. *shudder* I am _so_ _so_ _so_ happy that my particular ancestors didn't go to, say, Paraguay. Not anything against Paraguay, just an observation about how successful that branch was at self-isolation.

Blah blah blah, diabetes, blah blah, gestational diabetes, blah blah, errors of metabolism, "autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, hyper- and hypothyroidism, multiple sclerosis, and red cell aplasia" -- definitely sounds the right group of people. The Tourettes, I have to say, was a little surprising.

This particular article is from 1989. Wonder what kind of progress has been made on the topic since then.

ETA: http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00359580

Comments

Re: do you mean Chortitza or the Ukraine in general?

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Probably the part that remained German, but I don't know (B.'s gone out again). All I remember is that they insist on not being called Prussians themselves -- IIRC they say they were among the peasants oppressed by Prussian rule. (Obviously I have never properly followed all this, nor do I have sufficient grasp of European history to have a base to graft the family stories onto.)